


Black is the Color of my True Love's Hair

by coldhope



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Moirallegiance, hair play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-01
Updated: 2012-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-31 22:43:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/349130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldhope/pseuds/coldhope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You climb into the pile behind him and settle his head in your lap, and you start combing through the heavy, glossy, void-black mass of his hair. He makes a little surprised noise and for a moment you think you’re going to have to argue with him regarding moirallegiance hair-messing rights, but he subsides again, and you smile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black is the Color of my True Love's Hair

⇒ Be the mighty huntress.

You are always the mighty huntress, don’t be silly. Right now you have had enough of mighty hunting for the time being and you want something quiet and relaxing to do, everyone else is snippy and on edge and it’s making you anxious and you don’t like that. And nobody will roleplay with you.

You go to find your moirail, who is also difficult to get to roleplay with you but is almost always won over by your patented Enormous Sad Kitten Eyes. He’s in his workroom bent over something on a bench, microtorch held delicately between fingers that could crush it without a thought, and you do not in fact thunder over and glomp him because you know better. You wait until he’s put the torch down and straightened up and...he’s taken off his cracked shades and is rubbing at his eyes, and now you notice how tired he looks, how heavily the air of the room seems to weigh on him.

“Equius?” you ask, without parenthetically describing yourself. He stiffens and turns to look at you, and some of the stern lines fade from his brow and jaw. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Was there something you needed?”

You have a vast mental stock of answers to this question but for some reason you don’t employ any of them, just coming forward to put a hand on his arm. He’s sweaty, but not awfully so; he just looks so _tired_. “Come sit with me?” you ask. “Purr-lease?”

The pun makes his eyes crinkle a little at the corners as he half-smiles. “I’m busy,” he says.

“Just for a while?” You tug at his arm. You know perfectly well he has a thing for how tiny your hands are, how delicate your pointed fingers, compared to his own frame, and you are not above exploiting this.

“....Very well,” he sighs, and flicks off the power supply for the microtorch, wiping his hands with an oil-stained towel. “But only for a little while, Nepeta, I have work to do.”

You drag him across the room to the pile you have built together for such times as this, and feelings jams, and when you cannot bear the atmosphere of the others’ intense conversation and need to cling to him and bury your face in the familiar spicy-sweat-smell of his shirt, feel the steady deep rhythm of his bloodpusher eclipsing all the other sounds that threaten to overwhelm you. He follows you, haltingly, and you can tell he really is tired by the way he lets himself flop down in the pile. Your bloodpusher hurts. You’re used to that.

You climb into the pile behind him and settle his head in your lap, and you start combing through the heavy, glossy, void-black mass of his hair. He makes a little surprised noise and for a moment you think you’re going to have to argue with him regarding moirallegiance hair-messing rights, but he subsides again, and you smile. Your fingertips work from his scalp through the thick locks, carefully, outward, pausing here and there to untangle a knot--he takes no care of his hair, it’s a tragedy, really it is, such lovely hair and it could be even more beautiful if he even bothered to brush it once in a while--and you feel him sigh against you more than you can hear it. The anxious rigidity of his muscle and bone begin to ease, a little, as you keep working; and when you pull a proper comb from your sylladex and begin to work in earnest he makes a little soft noise that you _know_ no one else on this asteroid, no one else in all the worlds or times has ever heard, and that makes your bloodpusher hurt more.

He worries about everything; it’s what he does, what he’s always done, but since you began playing the game there is ever so much _more_ for him to worry about. It’s easier when he has a job in hand, like building Tavros’ legs or Aradia’s soulbot or Vriska’s arm, but even then he worries and you can see it weighing on him. You bend over and nuzzle the top of his head, inhaling that spicy-warm scent of him, and stop messing with his hair long enough to wrap your arms around his neck and hug him to you. After a moment one vast hand awkwardly, cautiously rises to touch your own clasped hands where they rest on his chest.

He can touch you, like this, he can hold you as carefully as he would hold a treasure of filigreed silver, conscious at all times of what he is doing and how much force he is employing, and you wish fiercely that you were like Aradia, that you were made of metal and that he could not hurt you by accident, so that you could feel his arms around you properly, be clung to, be held. But it’s not a thing that lasts, that fierceness, and you are happy enough to have him touch you even this carefully.

You finish combing out the black silk of his hair and now you decaptchalogue a colorful assortment of barrettes and hairclips, and he groans softly but you know he doesn’t mind, not really. Now you get to play properly, now that he’s relaxed at last, and you take _full_ advantage of the opportunity.

The best thing, the best thing ever, is realizing that he’s fallen asleep while you braided and clipped and squeaked to yourself about how much of a pretty princess you are making him. His hand has fallen away from his chest and lies open against the angles of the pile, and his breathing has evened out and deepened, approaching something like peace. Your fingers stop moving, then begin again, ever so gently stroking his hair; and just right now, just at this very moment, you are the most fortunate huntress this universe has ever known.

**Author's Note:**

> Kind of a companion piece to Hyperhidrosis. I like the idea of Nepeta being, rather than just lol weeaboo catgirl, actually in need of someone quiet and steady like Equius to retreat to when social anxiety gets to be too much; and I really like the idea of her being the only one who gets to mess with his hair.


End file.
